The Long and Winding Road
by xfucktheglasses
Summary: You must be a dream. —Sasuke.


You do not no sadism until you've properly met me. The new Naruto chapter is the most beautiful thing ever. That is all. Anyway, I've had this idea in my head for ages and then Rhea and late night skype convos and singing and just. Just. Yeah. (no this is not based on the new chapter)

This is for Rhea and for my mom.

**The Long and Winding Road**

He wanders around, allowing the back of his mind to soak and roll the massive amount of information given to him.

His head hurts—pulses enough to blur his eyes and forces him to pause in his steps one time too many. It's frustrating, to say the least; but he continues to walk, breaking away from the group and allowing his legs to lead him wherever they wish. Konoha may not be home but it is still his birthplace and deep inside, he still remembers the trails like he had never left; engraved against his veins and their memories hidden in between his bones, soaking up into the very marrow.

He has never… He had not wanted what Itachi said to be true.

But hearing it from the Third—it is—it is… Sasuke sighs and drops the thought.

He does not want to think about it quite yet.

He looks up and finds himself at home—this is home. Not Konoha, but this mess of a landscape, with cement walls crumbled and broken and wood and planks and centuries of history all gone. This is the Uchiha compound, where his childhood still lies somewhere under all the mess and Sasuke stares with eyes so blank, and with all the emotion drained out of him.

He has never felt as tired as he feels right then.

He moves above the destruction, looking down and seeing white and red and blood and he slowly begins to understand why his legs blindly brought him here. But Sasuke does not want to acknowledge the fact that he is homesick, that he's been lost for about ten years and no amount of direction has been able to get him home and all the help he's received has seem to driven him further away.

But he wants to go home; wherever that is, he wishes to be there. He wishes to rest, to be done with all the deception and rage; allow the emptiness in his chest to fill up with something or other and continue moving on so he can finally just rest.

Sasuke kicks a small rock and lifts his head up to watch it travel across the mess of fallen buildings. He pauses upon sighting someone—a shadow, almost—standing right at the center of the ruins. His jaw grows tense as he clenches it, willing his legs to move towards the person. He has not a single clue of what he is going to say or do; he doesn't think he even knows why he's moving towards them.

Defensiveness of his home and the family he lost, he supposes.

He comes close to the person; their back is to him—a woman. She is a woman with dark hair, mussed and tangled. She wears a black dress, wrinkled and torn at the hem and—

Sasuke's blood runs cold and he freezes in his steps.

"…Mother…?"

It is an exhale of air, too soft to be audible for fear of letting something like hope plant itself in his chest and grow only to be ripped out. But the woman hears it and she turns her head, just slightly, her profile blurred by her long hair. Sasuke hears his heartbeat ring in his ears and he wishes to take a step closer but his body is not listening.

When she turns around, the world stops spinning.

A breath is caught in the hollow of his throat and his heart—his heart has stopped beating and is he dead? Is he finally gone from the world with no place for him?

"Mother," he whispers again and his eyes lock with the specks of white, black obscuring the doe-eyes he remembers but it is her and Sasuke does not know what to do.

She interlaces her hands in front of her, lips parting as if she is going to speak.

This must be a dream.

"I tried to come home," she whispers. She nudges her chin, slightly. "This is what I found."

He does not move, even if every instinct in his body told him to run towards her. He does not move, he does not respond, he does not blink. Blinking would give reality a millisecond of a chance to take everything back.

"Oh," she gasps, lifting a hand up to cover her mouth. "How have you grown."

And suddenly he is seven again—suddenly he is running back home, into the kitchen and gleaming at his mother with burn marks around his lips. And suddenly everything is okay because he is still young and ignorant and innocent, being held by the hand when he accompanies his mother into the village. And suddenly everything is okay.

Sasuke moves, then. It is cautious steps, a walk, a jog, a sprint until he wraps his arms around his mother and buries his face into her shoulder and he is crying because she still smells like midnight walks after a rain shower because the thunder kept him awake. He screams into the fabric of her dress and he screams louder when he feels her wrap her arms around him and slowly drops them both to the ground and she's humming, rocking them both with one hand smoothing out his hair.

He does not stop screaming and he does not stop crying for what seems like forever and his mother holds him every second of it.


End file.
